Conventionally, in various electrical appliances and so forth, electric connectors have been widely used for electrically connecting a flat-plate-shaped signal transmission medium such as a flexible flat cable (FFC) or a flexible printed circuit (FPC) to a circuit wiring board. An electric connector of this type is used with a connection terminal part of a conductive contact member being mounted by, for example, solder joint or the like, on a main surface of the circuit wiring board. The flat-plate-shaped signal transmission medium inserted into an insertion opening provided to a housing of the electric connector is electrically connected to the circuit wiring board as being retained in contact with the conductive contact member attached to the housing.
To retain the flat-plate-shaped signal transmission medium inserted inside the electric connector as described above, a positioning part formed of, for example, a notched concave part, is formed on a terminal portion on a depth side in an inserting direction in the flat-plate-shaped signal transmission medium. In a widely-adopted structure, with part of a lock member provided to the electric connector being engaged with that positioning part, the flat-plate-shaped signal transmission medium is retained. When the flat-plate-shaped signal transmission medium engaged by the lock member is released, while operation is performed such as, for example, pushing a lock releasing part in a predetermined direction by one hand of an operator, the flat-plate-shaped signal transmission medium is held by the other hand to be extracted outside the electric connector.
Therefore, when the flat-plate-shaped signal transmission medium retained as being engaged inside the electric connector is removed, both hands of the operator have to be used to perform operation of releasing the lock member. In particular, as described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2013-178892 mentioned below, if lock members are arranged at both end portions in a connector longitudinal direction, for example, when the flat-plate-shaped signal transmission medium is removed from the electric connector in a narrow space inside an electrical appliance or the like, it is difficult to perform the operation by both hands in that narrow space. Also, in the first place, both hands may not be able to enter the inside of the narrow space, thereby disabling the removal operation itself.
The inventor of the present application discloses Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2013-178892 as a prior art document of the present invention.
Thus, an object of the present invention is to provide an electric connector having a simple structure and allowing easy removal of a flat-plate-shaped signal transmission medium inserted inside a housing.